Local election offices reportedly received mailed ballots days after the deadline to be counted ‘in nearly every state’
State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the US Postal Service (USPS) that it hasn’t fixed persistent deficiencies.
The officials said in a letter that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted.
They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable.
It’s exactly what Republicans wanted by making Louis DeJoy the Postmaster General, right?
How.
The fuck.
Is that fucking guy still there?
It’s complicated, and Congress is taking advantage of that to keep him there. The nine-member United States Postal Service Board of Governors has sole authority to fire, and hire, the Postmaster General. At the moment there are only 7 members, 3 Dems, 3 Reps, 1 Ind. 6 members are required for a quorum.
Biden has 2 pending nominations and a pending reappointment of an existing governor. There are still 2 governors remaining from Trump’s administration at this point. The Senate confirmed 3 seats in July 2021 and 2 seats in May 2022, and nothing since. They seem to be doing the absolute bare minimum to intentionally delay any possible changes.
Note that these are not full time government positions like the Postmaster. They only meet once a month usually.
I thought the Democrats are in control of the Senate? Why delay on something that might hurt their own party’s seats?
That’s the neat part! They aren’t!
Sinema and Manchin officially went Independent, plus there’s like half a dozen other neoliberals who are just as guilty of being rat fucking losers that got less press.
Because politics isn’t simple in reality, there are a lot of different reasons things are approved or not that may not even be relevant to the actual issue at hand.
On top of that, the parties are very different on how they handle things. The Republican party generally will fall in line as a group, they treat politics very simply. Seemingly because they all have closets overflowing with skeletons that they’re all hiding for each other and they’ll be exposed if they don’t follow the group. You’re either part of the group and they’ll defend you at all costs, or they tear will you apart.
The Democratic party on the other hand are like herding cats. They might be working towards the same general goal, maybe, but they won’t just fall in line because the group says they should.
Ehhhh… The Republicans are pretty torn now. They couldn’t even agree on a house speaker and replaced their first choice within months.
Don’t mistake the infighting over something that actually matters, for an inability to bully each other into being an obstruction to anything the Democrats want. Not electing a speaker is just as effective obstruction as well. As long as they don’t actually want to pass anything on their side, it’s arguably even more effective. And that’s their purpose. The current Republican platform is to be the exact opposite of the Dems, and whatever blurts out of Trump’s mouth at the moment.
They don’t like each other, but they stand together being a wall for anything the Dems want to pass, regardless of what it is. At this point they’d probably vote against a nationwide abortion ban at conception with no exceptions if the Dems introduced the bill.
Crazy. Who is the Senate Majority Leader right now?
Biden didn’t have the power to remove him and didn’t want to appear to act like the orange man. Politics getting in the way of Democracy.
That’s exactly what he was put there to do. Well, that and just generally disrupt the postal service enough to push people to their more expensive competitors. It’s dramatic but I always joke that he’s my nemesis. I’m just grateful that we have ballot drop boxes all over in CO where I live so that people don’t have to depend on the mail.
Post Offices are directly mentioned in the constitution as a job of the federal gov. Its so crazy to me how much cover the US media gives republicans when they do their nonsense.
Doesn’t seem to be a very good plan, USPS has been consistently delivering all my packages, sending and receiving, on time or even ahead of schedule.
And I send and receive a lot of packages. I also send and receive FedEx a lot, and they’re also consistently on time, but USPS still beats them on “chance of early delivery”
I don’t do a whole lot with UPS, I’ve maybe had 4 or 5 packages the past couple months with them and 3 of them were late. UPS sucks.
They didn’t change much. They removed most air/overnight options and they set the delivery standard to the actual real world.
Air mail gets delayed too often, so they went with a longer but more consistent approach.
Anybody that the Republicans put in charge of any federal agency is there for the purpose of destroying that agency. I used to think defense was an exception but, given Republican’s new found love for Russia, I don’t think that can be assumed any longer.
Yes. But Biden has had the ability to replace him for a couple years now. He has not.
As /u/halcyoncmdr explained, no, no he doesn’t. As usual its republicans blocking progress.
Bullshit. The Board of Governors can approve a new Postmaster General. The law says that the makeup of the board can only have a majority party such that it has one more member than the minority party.
Current makeup of the board of governors:
There are only two governors that were placed there by Trump (both Republican). The last two governors placed were a Democrat and a Republican back in May 2022.
So sure, it may be the Republicans and one independent mucking it up but Biden could literally change that at any time and could have since May 2022. His last nominations could have been two Democrats. Instead, it was one Republican and one Democrat.
Let’s not provide cover for bullshit. This is a pretty clear failure by the Biden administration.
Pretty clear you didn’t read the above explanation. You’re missing nuance. I’m frustrated as well, but that’s not license for self-righteous whining. There are larger influencing factors here and (as designed by the bad guys) that’s too much other shot on fire for them to directly spend political capital on this (which, by nature means something else would have to lose out). No true motivation for Biden or any other dem to keep Dejoy in, even when considering broken personal philosophies. What’s the benefit you’re claiming? Why would they be doing it, to what ends?
I did read the above explanation and it books down to “it’s complicated” and “Congress doesn’t want to rock the boat.” And you say that there is too much other shit on fire. Guess who pointed this out as a fire? Democrats. I absolutely agree that it is a fire and needs to be put out. . It’s not even that much political capital since they have control of the Senate and a USPS governor confirmation has absolutely never made front page news.
You are assuming that I think they see benefit in keeping him around. I don’t think they do. I also don’t think they ever really gave a shit in the first place.